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Country: Middle East

The Islamic Declaration on Climate Change, endorsed in August by Islamic scholars from around the world, calls on countries to phase out greenhouse gas emissions and switch to 100% renewable energy. With 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, the collective statement sends a strong signal ahead of the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit later this month, and the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December. By Noor al-Hussein, Queen of JordanMore

Since time immemorial, religion has not only been used as an inspiration and a guide for life, but also as a way of furthering interests and achieving specific political ends. This instrumentalisation can be either intentional or unintentional. In this essay, Hakim Khatib looks at a number of countries where Islam has been instrumentalised in the recent past and examines the various different forms this instrumentalisation can takeMore

Can sharing meals together promote peace? At the very least, the culture of cuisine provides people with the opportunity to come closer together, overcome prejudices, and better understand various lifestyles. Laura Overmeyer on cooking as a form of cultural dialogueMore

Few are able to bridge Egypt's deeply polarising divide between supporters and opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood following the 2013 military coup that toppled President Mohammed Morsi. Mohammed Aboutreika, Egypt's most celebrated and storied soccer player, is proving to be either the exception that proves the rule or an indication of shifting attitudes. By James M. DorseyMore

In this article, former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi calls on the world not to shut its eyes to the atrocities being committed in Syria and not to give in to despair or to resign itself to the assumption that the situation cannot be resolvedMore

Violent conflicts are spreading throughout the Middle East. The German government is extending a hand to the Egyptian president, siding with Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict and delivering weapons to the Peshmerga. But there is criticism from the opposition and scepticism within the ruling coalition. By Bettina MarxMore

Mor Loushy's moving documentary "Censored Voices" is based on the Israeli book "The Seventh Day" (Hebrew: Siach Lochamim), in which soldiers who fought in the Six Day War in 1967 talk about their personal experiences and intimate feelings. The interviews were conducted only days after the conflict by writers, including a young Amos Oz and the editor and publisher Avraham Shapira, who were, like the soldiers, Kibbutz members at the time. They wanted to understand the grief of the soldiers, grief that had been drowned out by the victory parades. Igal Avidan spoke to the directorMore

Sari Nusseibeh is a Palestinian philosophy professor and was president of al-Quds University in Jerusalem from 1995 to 2014, where he still teaches. For many years, he was the most senior Palestinian official in East Jerusalem. In this interview with Sabine Peschel at the recent Goethe-Institut conference "Dialogue and the experience of the other" in Berlin, he speaks about Israeli–Palestinian negotiations, the upcoming elections in Israel, the legacy of the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamic StateMore

Burning the pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh alive was meant to sow fear and discord in Jordan. It has in fact had the opposite effect. The Jordanian writer and literary critic Fakhri Saleh looks back on a harrowing and dramatic week in JordanMore

Karen Armstrong, British scholar of comparative religion, finds that there is a long and inglorious tradition of distorting Islam in Europe. She criticises the notion that Islam is essentially more violent than Christianity and speaks about the genesis of Western disdain for the Arab world. Interview by Claudia MendeMore

The islands of stability in the Arab-Islamic world are shrinking. In the face of war and chaos, the West continues to cling to its new-old allies: the "moderate Sunni regimes". The aim of this alliance, which purportedly shares goals and ideals, is that "good Islam" will conquer "bad Islam" with Western support. By Stefan BuchenMore

The war in Gaza this past summer triggered memories of life during and after the second intifada in the West Bank. In Hebron in particular, many Palestinians fear that restrictions on their freedom of movement, which is already limited, could be tightened even more. Impressions of a divided city by Susanne KaiserMore

In conversation with Maria Santacecilia, the star conductor and co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, analyses the consequences of the aggravated Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its effects on his orchestra, which celebrates its fifteenth anniversary this yearMore

In light of the inability of those involved in the Gaza conflict to make peace, Europe cannot just stand on the sidelines and watch. If it does, the conflict will come here. The ostracisation of Hamas has proved counter-productive. A commentary by Abdel Mottaleb El HusseiniMore

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Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's presence can still be felt in a landscape increasingly dominated by President Tayyip Recep Erdogan. Bradley Secker travelled through Turkey to find secular iconography of the republic's founder